“Hello- my IVF doctor said I should not take the herbs at this time bc they don’t know how it will interact with the injections once I start. ” One of my patients told me today. While we have to feel sorry for her doctor, as he maybe good at her IVF specialty, but lack of knowledge or interest on what patients want. Patients want result or how to improve their chances. It would be easy to tell his patients that IVF failed because she has bad gene problems or too old, POF, LOR or just unexplained infertility. IVF doctors / REs believe the deterioration process of human ovarian reserve is irreversible when age advances. There is no hope here except keeping on trying cycle by cycle. IVF is expensive for most people to bear, not even to tell those back-to-backs.
What if we first hold off IVF or IUI until we get the quality of eggs or ovarian reserve improved? After decades of medical and technical advance, the mainstream IVF medicine finally reached the technological limits or bottleneck on how to retrieve the best eggs even with the PGT or PGS. The conventional thought or idea is the ovarian reserve can never be improved, it is on the downhill track of degeneration. While they have denied the efficacy of acupuncture, researches have proved acupuncture works, and patients tell them they are benefited from acupuncture treatment. Now acupuncture is well accepted and recommended by conventional doctors. The next step is the recognition of Chinese TCM herbs. TCM herbs have been used for thousands of years in China as mainstream medicine. Only in the recent hundred years, the western medicine becomes the main stream in China. However, the role of Chinese TCM medicine has never stopped functioning in all aspect of medicine including fertility. People has been using TCM herbs to improve ovarian reserve and egg quality to improve fertility. Outside China, TCM herbs have been gaining recognition in improving IVF results or even for those rejected by IVF w donors.
The TCM herbs for enhancing ovarian reserve including plant roots, stems, leaf, seeds, etc. They are mostly dietary nutrition support to improving human vitality and balancing Yin/Yang.
We are glad to see there are some IVF clinic/doctors start to pay attention at effect of nutritional diets to improve ovarian reserve. Even though they are using a different term to describe as “anti-oxidative”, it is a big step towards holistic integrative treatment approach. At CCRM website,
“Oxidative stress is known to be a significant contributor to ovarian dysfunction and subsequent poor oocyte quality. The aim of this study is to examine the clinical benefit of supplementation with a natural anti-oxidant prior to ovarian stimulation and in vitro fertilization (IVF) for women with a history of failed implantation.” https://www.ccrmivf.com/ovahealth-study/?amp
It continues: “Our preliminary results indicate improvements in clinical outcomes following the supplementation of our natural anti-oxidant prior to ovarian stimulation. The restoration of the balance between oxidants and antioxidants in the ovary during the early stages of oocyte development may account for the clinical improvements observed. ”
While we have observed the efficacy of TCM herbs and formulated our treatment scheme, it has draw similar outlines as: Female patient must be willing to take ACAI supplement for 8-12 weeks prior to IVF cycle. The difference is that we have vast amount of candidate herbs and formula to cope with different body constitutions and dynamics of menstruations.
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